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You might see more sponsored recommendations when you fire up your Spotify app, now that the music streaming giant has started offering artists a new paid tool they can use to promote their music. “Showcase” gives artists a way to put their music in front of more people, whether their tunes are newly released or are something from deep in their catalog. They can create multiple campaigns for different content, and they can use Spotlight to promote not just singles, but also EPs and albums. 

These sponsored recommendations will appear under various headlines — succinct information about them designed to get your attention, really — provided by Spotify, depending on what the artist’s team chooses. They can promote their stuff as “new music,” for instance, or use the headline “on tour,” if they’re on the road and want to drum up more interest. In the image above, the single that’s being promoted entitled White Winter Hymnal uses the headline “seasonal vibes.” In addition, artists can choose the people they want to target and can go for both active listeners and previous ones. 

According to Spotify, Showcase ads will be shown in 30 markets. The streaming giant also claims that people who do see them are six times more likely to stream whatever it is being promoted. If you stream music you’ve seen through a particular Showcase ad, you won’t see it again for 28 days. Musicians are charged per click, after all, with prices starting at 40 cents. Initially, though, Spotify will only offer Showcase to artists with at least 1,000 streams over the past 28 days and whose billing country is set to the US. It will roll out the tool within the Campaigns tab for eligible artists in the US over the coming weeks, but it says it will expand access to it worldwide over time. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/spotify-will-promote-artists-music-on-your-home-feed-if-they-pay-105740700.html?src=rss 

Caesars Entertainment reportedly paid “tens of millions of dollars” to hackers who threatened to release company data, Bloomberg has reported. The attack was reportedly perpetrated by a group called Scattered Spider (aka UNC 3944), a group skilled at using social engineering to bypass corporate network security. It’s the second notable attack of a Las Vegas casino group, following a hack that caused a cyber outage at MGM Resorts. 

Members of the hacking group are reportedly located in the US and UK and are as young as 19 years old. They began targeting Caesars as early as August 27th, and obtained access to an outside vendor before entering the company’s network, according to the report. Caesars is expected to disclose the attack “imminently” in a regulatory filing. 

Scattered Spider has reportedly been activate since May of 2022, and has largely attacked telecom and business outsourcing organizations, according to Trellix. The group is known to impersonate IT personnel and uses social engineering to persuade company officials to rum remote monitoring and other tools. From there, they exploit vulnerabilities and use tools like “Stonestop” to evade security software. Security Week describes them as a “financially-motivated threat actor.” 

The group has been implicated in the MGM Resorts cyber outage as well, though another ransomware group called ALPHV/BlackCat also took credit. ALPHV also claims to have used social engineering to get inside, saying it took just a ten minute conversation to gain access. MGM has reportedly declined to pay the demanded ransom.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/caesars-reportedly-paid-millions-to-stop-hackers-releasing-its-data-081052820.html?src=rss 

Mac users who want to play Baldur’s Gate III on their computers only have to wait a few more days: Larian Studios has announced that the full version of the game will be available for Mac on September 21. It has been available for the OS for quite some time, but as a limited, early access version. Fans can only play the first act of the game and can’t go any further than what the developer previously described as “approximately 25 hours of self-contained content.” Soon, Mac gamers will be able to continue playing until they reach the Moonrise Towers and until secrets are revealed in the third act. 

Baldur’s Gate III was initially released for Windows PCs on August 3 before it came out for the PlayStation 5 earlier this month. For consoles, it remains a PlayStation 5 exclusive, but not because the developer struck a deal with Sony Entertainment. What happened was Larian Studios couldn’t cross a technical hurdle, preventing it from launching the game on Xbox at the same it came out for the PS5. 

Microsoft has rules requiring developers to ensure that games released for the Series S and Series X have the same features. In Larian Studios’ case, it couldn’t make the game’s split-screen coop feature work on the less powerful Series S. After meeting with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, though, the developer was given permission to release the title for the Series S without the split-screen function but with cross-save progression between Steam and the two Xbox consoles. The Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate III doesn’t have an exact release date yet, but it’s expected to come out before the year ends. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/baldurs-gate-iii-will-be-fully-available-for-mac-users-on-september-21-054650964.html?src=rss